Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Living in Dangerous Times

By Alan
Caruba

Bret
Stephens, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, had a commentary, “The Other Bluffer”, in which he discussed President Obama’s and Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s statements, respectively, on Syria and Iran; the former
regarding a “red line” concerning the use of poison gas and the latter being
Iran’s intention to make its own nuclear weapons.

The bluff
is a game nations have been playing since there were nations. They seldom work
against a nation with aggressive, bad intentions.

What is
interesting about this is that dictators have been known to write books about those
intentions. Adolf Hitler did with his book, Mein Kampf, in which he made clear
what he would do, starting with tearing up the Versailles Treaty and later
killing all of Germany’s and Europe’s Jews, though not necessarily in those
words. Hitler first invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and when the great
powers did nothing, he followed up with an invasion of Poland in September of
that year. Perhaps he thought he could gobble up all of Europe, but what ensued
was World War II.

In more
recent times, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein thought he could pull off a bluff regarding
weapons of mass destruction, perhaps assuming that no one would invade for fear
of them. He had used poison gas against Iran during a long war and killed
several thousand in an Iraqi city without more than expressions of international outrage, but
the invasion of Kuwait was a serious mistake. George H.W. Bush’s decision
to put an end to it. After 9/11, George W. Bush’s decision to invade deposed
Saddam.

The long
Cold War with the then-Soviet Union that followed World War II was a series of
bluffs, threats, and proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam. The Communist takeover of
Cuba by Fidel Castro led to the missile crisis that occurred when the Soviets
installed long range missiles there. President Kennedy imposed a naval blockade
in 1962 and waited to see what the Russians would do. They removed them and the
U.S. essentially continues to pursue a policy that denies Cuba any recognition,
though much of the rest of the world does business with that nation.

Stephens
has grave doubts about President Obama’s statements about Syria’s use of poison
gas which he regards as a bluff, predicting that “things will only get worse” and noting that the “Israelis are now watching
how the administration reacts when a rogue regime crosses the president’s red
lines.” He predicts that “As the Assad regime realizes it can use these weapons without
international penalty, it will unleash them again.”

“Sooner or
later,” said Stephens, “it will figure out that the more widely it uses them,
the quicker it can kill enemies at home and deter enemies abroad. A twofer. The
administration will go from arguing that it’s too soon to intervene in Syria,
to arguing that it’s too late.”

Obama’s
fallback position will be to toss the problem to the United Nations, famous for
never being able to do anything to deter aggression and usually dependent on
U.S. military power to resolve dangerous situations.

Syria’s
neighbor, Israel, has its own red line with Iran that has long since crossed
it and Stephens believes that “Mr. Obama will treat evidence of Iran’s
impending nuclearization the way he has looked at Syria’s use of chemical weapons.” Israel has no option other than to attack
Iran’s nuclear facilities to deter being destroyed. If history is any guide,
since Israel destroyed Iraq’s and Syria’s reactors, it is likely to do so at a
time of its choosing. Every Middle East state will express outrage and then rush
to their mosques to give thanks.

President
Obama has looked at the way failure to respond forcefully and preemptive wars have brought down previous
presidencies, costing the party in power the elections that followed. Ronald
Reagan defeated the one-term Jimmy Carter in the wake of the Iranian
hostage-taking of American diplomats in 1979. While the Korean War
was still in progress Eisenhower was elected when he promised to end it.
George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq gave him Obama the opportunity to get
elected by war-weary Americans. He did call North Korea’s bluff and is not
likely to order the U.S. into a war with any nation short of a direct attack on the homeland.

That does
not, however, diminish the threats to peace in the Middle East or anywhere else
that might occur. Indeed, the weakness he has shown will only encourage rogue
regimes to increase their aggressive behavior.

Those who
have any knowledge of history will recall that the Empire of Japan had already
been at war in Asia for several years prior to World War II and Nazi Germany
had already invaded several European nations and had been threatening England
for several years prior to Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Only then did
the United States mobilize to defeat both.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.